[3] English ornithologist John Latham described it as Columba spadicea in his 1801 work Supplementum Indicis Ornithologici.

[2] DNA collected and analyzed from toepad tissue indicated that the Norfolk Island pigeon is genetically sister to the New Zealand Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae population.

[2] Early records from Norfolk Island indicate the local people gave it the name "wood quest", however the name was not passed on from the second settlement to the Pitcairn settlers.

The term is related to the words "queece", "queest" and "quist" used for the wood pigeon in the West Midlands and southwestern England.

An officer of the penal colony there, Ensign Abel Dottin William Best, recorded the species as still quite common in 1838, with his journals mentioning his successful hunting of 72 birds, including 25 on September 18, 1838.